> What's wrong with offering an unified branch with few regressions for > both users and distributions? It's not that every distribution will use > it, but as soon as one or two distributions are using it the amount of > extra work for maintaining the branch should become pretty low.

the problem is simple: distributions will NOT use it. They can't, theyneed the newer HW support and the new features. The only difference isthat you basically added just another distro branch. If you knew howmany people it takes a distro to run such an old tree you'd be scared.(you need to include the QA people as well in this)

And distros hardly add hw support (the only hw support the enterprisedistros add is contained to like 5 or 10 drivers of "enterprise" stuff,well testable and often validated by the vendor of the hw; and even thenthere are regressions regularly)... for your branch you target adifferent audience that does want a lot broader new HW support.

And then there's the bugfixes.. those tend to have regressions too,especially if you move them to a different context than they originallycame from.

I'm not saying that you couldn't or shouldn't do this, I'm just sayingthat I think it'll be a LOT more work than you think, and that the gainis relatively minor. Especially since the main branch needs to sort thecompatibility item ANYWAY.